Clean sweep

First thing this morning I put tape on the laminated IDs and went out for an hour and half to put them up and restick all the signs I had noted were loose.

Back in the studio I photocopied 30 guides for the butterfly house and got them all laminated before delivering them to the Butterfly Forest display. I took away the old, crumpled and rather worn out looking few that were left from the batch that had been in there for a month or two.

Before lunch Lynsey popped over to the studio to check the kowari picture and gave it the ok. So now all I have to do is print that out after lunch, laminate it and get it up on show in Twilight World.

I have 8 bird IDs left to get laminated - I had left these until last as they also need to be hole-punched for the "book" displays they are used for.

The afternoon started with me finishing off and getting the kowari up on display. I had to fiddle with the image in Photoshop before getting the sign printed, as the background of the drawing was not quite white enough and lightening it in balance levels bleached out the finer lines of the drawing. So with the brush tool set on a soft setting I cleaned up the surrounding area.

Once the kowari sign was up I then started looking at my next project. Painting a lion's rear end!

One of the favourite things around the lion enclosure for kids is the spraying lion. A wooden board painted with the rear end of a lion, was inset with a spray nozzle, which had a pipe to a water supply and by pressing a button water sprayed out of the 'lion' just under the tail. It was well used by the children, who loved the idea of a lion spraying but also just the fact that children and playing with water are a natural mix. Sadly the well loved 'toy' started to suffer and the wood around the nozzle got very rotten. So a new board has been cut in the same shape as the old one and my job is now to paint a replica lion rear end.

I traced the basic outline of the previous painted lion as a guide and then set about searching for reference of a lion's rear end.... I had to word the google search request carefully as I got some very dubious websites to start with!! As you can imagine there are many many images of lions on the internet... surprisingly few, though, of the rear end of one! I eventually found just 5 that would be useful.

A trip to the Maintenance Dept was made so that I could look through their paint store, but after a short look it was decided that it would be better just for me to order new tins. I was given a Dulux paint chart swatch and a quick look through ended with me requesting 5 tins... 2 greens, two browns and a yellow colour which should be delivered tomorrow. Which means I can start painting next week... but not Monday.. that's a Bank Holiday here in the UK so I will not be in work.